Economist Dean Baker wrote an excellent call out on corruption in the economics profession.  He calls it theories for sale and boy howdy is he right.  This site was started due to so much statistical spin.  One cannot tell the trees through the forest often, unless one has the time to go digging deep into faulty assumptions and in many cases, the mathematics manipulated to come up with an economic lie.  Most people do not have the time or the theoretical background to realize they have been hoodwinked.  A science which should be following the methods of accuracy and objectivity has been corroded into just another political and public relations spin tool.  If lobbyists could boil down the U.S. constitution to talking points, they would and the constant buying off of Economists has eroded the profession.

If you head a big pharmaceutical company and you want to strengthen your patent monopolies to allow you to charge more money for your drugs for a longer time, there is no shortage of economists who are willing to argue your case. If you run an investment bank and you want to avoid regulations and oversight, there are plenty of economists who are willing to attest that government interference will slow growth and cost jobs. If you own a gas or oil company that wants to frack without paying for the damage done to farmland and drinking water, you can find economists to back you too.

In short, in keeping with economic theory, there are plenty of economists who, under the influence of moneyed interests, are willing to put forward arguments that don’t fit the data. For this reason, the public has rightly grown skeptical of economists.

There is also an uproar over certain traders obtaining economic reports before anyone else does.  Supposedly the press is locked in a room for 30 minutes to read economic reports before they are publicly released.  Yet this limits information to a select few media organizations as well as high frequency flash traders, through leaks.  This also explains why the stock market trades on the most useless information, such as initial unemployment claims.  No one cares if there is a statistical data problem, or if the number is meaningless in the big picture.  All that matters is getting those economic figures before anyone else does and then trading on it.  Also amazing is the press gets a head start on these reports, yet interprets them incorrectly anyway.  Clearly Wall Street doesn't care about the economy and what economic indicators mean beyond their immediately trading strategies.